A Crowded Nest is Best

   I decided to start this Blog because much of our life is on our medical site and it really doesn't belong there.  Also because so much of our life is NOT on our medical site. This will be about our family, my adventures as a wife and mother of 8 wonderful homeschooled children, some refelctions and of course our crazy medical circus.  If anyone chooses to read, that will be lovely but it's really therapy for me so I can keep sane and keep going in this very odd life God has given me. Besides, with all the brain stuff I am afflicted with (insert sarcasm) it will be my memory in the years to come.

  This first post is one of thankful awe. There are 3 reasons...

 1) for Fall 

2) for surviving the last week  and

3) for my Family. 

Outside it is so beautiful with all the trees changing and the wind blowing leaves around.  This is absolutely my favorite time of year by far. Everything smells good with folks beginning to use their woodstoves and fireplaces. The kids are all here for Sunday dinner and of course I decide to start on some hare brained idea of a blog...go figure.  But when the spirit moves you...the spirit moves you !

   Every Sunday we have a family dinner. After Mass, the few that are out on their own come home for the day along with significant others and Ed helps whoever needs assistance with car repairs or loans or math or any  number of things.  It's my happy-go-lucky day of the week when I do not have to make dinner...yay me!  I make a huge breakfast in the morning before church, then I am OFF the rest of the day!  The kids and Ed BBQ for the good weather months of the year, the other half they decide what's for dinner and prepare it.  I don't have to do a bloomin' thing.

   After a couple hairy weeks of hospitalizations for me, broken appliances and other home disasters, sick kids, etc. we are finally getting organized.  In 10 days time I was in the hospital twice for brain shunt malfunctions and the day I got home from the second one, the dryer broke and in a family our size that is a true disaster!  The fridge decided to freeze everything and a few days later the septic started backing up into the tubs....yeah....yuk. So my wonderful mailman husband rushed home from the P.O. and dug up the darn thing in the rain. In his uniform he was on the ground unclogging it with the twins helping.  He conquered it but it then needed to be pumped for a lovely 395.00 !  A new roof is scheduled for next week and of course it starts to rain this week :/ Then we find out one of the trusses is broken so Ed gets in the attic thinking he can repair it with Eddie (son #1) but no luck....it has to be done by the roofers...more money. Blah.  Last but not least the new (new to us) van we just bought (and I LOVE) started leaking water into the interior from under the dash...grrrrrr.

   Factor into all that homeschooling and you have a real mess.  Thankfully the boys are self motivated and get most of their work done without me.  I now have mounds of correcting to do. So why am I blogging if I have mounds of school to correct?  THAT is always the million dollar question. 

    We have been studying Lewis and Clark and thankfully that included a very long documentary over mutliple days with discussions that didn't require paperwork! Love easy homeschooling! Love this subject! We had great discussions about the indians that Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery dealt with. They seemed to sense from this excellent documentary that the indians were respected by the Corps. After the expedition ended, William Clark became Governor of the Missouri Territory and was the agent of Indian Affairs where according to letters, he was frequently upset over the treatment of the native peoples he and Lewis had come to know. The boys could see how the movement west affected these people, yet, how that was what exploration was about.  I explained how people now want to say how terrible the "whites" were to the native peoples and this is true in many ways, but conquering new or already conqured land was what was going on all over the world white or not.  It was the way things were.  The boys did see though, that the westerns they love to watch are inaccurate when they show the native indians to be so cruel as if they had no reason to be so.  Hard stuff.  I have native American Indian in my family, Eastern Cherokee. My Grandpa looked very much like an Indian. I am proud of this.

   My other favorite thing about this subject is that when they arrived on the west coast, Lewis and Clark decided to let everyone vote about where they would stay for the winter. This included York, the slave Clark had brought along and Sacagawea who of course was a woman...an Indian woman. I find this quite emotional for some reason. So American.  They were all equal in the vote. (Though, of course,  the circumstances of York and Sacagawea were not opitmal by present day standards.)

   On the medical front, my brain shunt is not functioning well and I am trying to hold off another brain surgery as long as possible. It may not be long.  My hair now looks seriously like the back end of a raccoon......a wild raccoon :(   Mary seems to have Strep. so we will see the doctor tomorrow as she is immune suppressed and can get in trouble easily.  We did not give her the Methotrexate shot this weekend so her bones are not going to feel so hot this week.

   I don't know how this blog business goes. I don't know how I will arrange my thoughts or the subjects here so I'm sure it will evolve. Be patient... I am seriously lame. It will be an act of charity on your part to be kind to a poor girl afflicted with lame-ness :)

~Blessings~

Lisa